Laguna Beach Skateboard Ban Wipes Out

The skateboarding ban being talked about in Laguna Beach appears to have done a face plant.

The Laguna Beach Parking, Traffic and Circulation Committee unveiled a final version of a proposed ordinance Thursday night that was missing something huge that had been in previous drafts: a boarding probition on four steep hillside streets.

News that roller bans on Park Avenue, Nyes Place, Summit Drive and Alta Laguna Boulevard had been lifted from the ordinance pleased about 50 skateboarders and parents who attended the committee meeting.

The proposed law does still set fines starting at $25 for various infractions, including not wearing a helmet or threatening a person's safety or property. It now goes on to the City Council for a final review.

A resident of hilly Morningside Drive earlier this summer asked for a skating ban on streets with a 3 percent grade or more, prompting the committee hearings.

Among those testifying was Mark Golter, the 2003 world champion downhill skater, who appealed to the committee to keep steep hills open to skateboarders who follow safety rules.

"Those four roads happen to be really the only skilled riding courses in this town," Golter reportedly told the panel. "All four of those hills are the only hills that I rode when I was riding. Those are the hills of Laguna."

Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before "graduating" to OC Weekly in 1995 as the paper's first calendar editor. He has contributed as a freelance editor and writer to several publications and been the subject of or featured in several reports online, in print and on the radio and television. One of countless times he returned to his Costa Mesa, CA, home with a bounty of awards from a journalism competition, his wife told him to take out the trash.